Horse-Meat Probe Yields 3 U.K. Arrests

British Police Detain Three People and France Suspends Processor's License, as Investigation Into Cause Widens

By

Cassell Bryan-Low in London and

Mimosa Spencer in Paris

Updated Feb. 14, 2013 3:44 p.m. ET

European probes into the mislabeling of horse meat as beef intensified Thursday, as U.K. police arrested three men in a fraud investigation and French officials suspended the license of a meat processor after finding evidence of fraud and mislabeling.

The EU is asking its 27 members to test processed food samples for horse meat as scandal widens. WSJ's Matthew Dalton says Europol is also looking at whether a criminal ring is involved in the false labelling of beef. Photo: Reuters

The developments came as Europol, Europe's police coordinating body, is stepping in to help with the investigations, which have largely been handled by national food authorities.

Also on Thursday, British authorities said they found the presence of an equine veterinary drug in carcasses of slaughtered horses that may have entered the food chain, escalating the scandal from one of mislabeling to one with potential health implications. While potentially harmful to humans, officials say huge amounts of the drug must be ingested to present a health risk.

The scandal started in Ireland last month, when authorities there found horse meat in some beef burgers sold in large U.K. supermarket chains, but it has now swept across Europe. Supermarkets in the U.K., France, Germany and Switzerland have withdrawn millions of products including frozen lasagnas, burgers and spaghetti Bolognese from their shelves and the scandal has stretched to countries including Sweden and Romania.

European officials are trying to determine whether the mislabeling can be traced back to one scheme or whether passing horse meat as beef is a widespread practice. The price of horse meat can be far less than beef, which could mean big profits for companies that can disguise horse meat.

Officials believe the scandal is the result of intentional mislabeling rather than accidental contamination.

On Thursday, police in the U.K. arrested three men on suspicion of fraud following raids this week at two British meat plants as part of an inquiry into kebabs and burgers that purported to be beef but were in fact horse, according to the U.K. Food Standards Agency.

The unnamed men, age 42 to 64 years old, from Wales and West Yorkshire, are being detained by police, the agency said. Operations at both plants were suspended.

French officials said they were temporarily suspending the license of Spanghero SAS, a unit of French company Poujol. Authorities say the company supplied meat to another French company, Comigel SAS, which made beef-labeled frozen lasagna ready meals for a frozen-food maker that were found to contain horse meat.

Authorities have revealed a lengthy supply chain that traced the horse meat back to Romanian abattoirs, via Dutch and Cypriot food traders.

Spanghero, which has said it was deceived by suppliers when buying beef, said Thursday it had ordered and sold what it thought was beef, "properly labeled as such, in line with European and French regulations."

Comigel declined to comment. The Romanian government has said the food was properly labeled when it left the country.

Also coming under scrutiny is Cyprus-based company, Draap Trading Ltd., which is the Dutch word for horse spelled backward.

Draap sells horse meat out of a Dutch warehouse owned by a company called Nemijtek BV, in Breda, the Netherlands, according to Jeffrey Grootenboer, Nemijtek's director. He said Dutch authorities visited Nemijtek's facilities, from which Draap shipped between 40 and 100 metric tons of horse meat a month, to take samples of the horse meat.

According to media reports, Draap's director was convicted by a Breda court in January 2012 in relation to the mislabeling of horse meat as beef.

A lawyer for Draap's director confirmed in a statement that the executive was convicted in a 2012 case, and said there was an appeal continuing. He said the case regarded another issue, without elaborating.

The lawyer added in the statement that Draap's meat meets all food-safety standards and that "whatever clients order, we deliver to them." The director couldn't be directly reached to comment.

A Europol spokesman said the agency stood ready to assist but its ability to do so would be dependent on national governments sharing information with them.

Europol doesn't have the authority to seize evidence or arrest suspects but, it can help with intelligence analysis and the exchange of information across the European Union's 27 members.

While horse meat is as palatable as beef there has been concern that a veterinary drug given to horses that can be dangerous to humans.

The U.K.'s Food Standards Agency on Thursday said it found traces of drug phenylbutazone, a painkiller and anti-inflammatory known as bute, in eight of some 200 horse carcasses it tested.

It added that most of those eight carcasses had been sent to France and may have entered the food chain and that it was working with French authorities to trace them.

While the drug isn't allowed to enter the food chain in the U.K., British authorities said the risk to those people who may have eaten meat containing it is very low.

"At the levels of bute that have been found, a person would have to eat 500 to 600 burgers a day that are 100% horse meat to get close to consuming a human's daily dose," said Britain's Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies.

She added that the drug also is prescribed to some human patients who suffer from severe arthritis and although as a medicine it can incur serious side effects, those are rare.

"It is extremely unlikely that anyone who has eaten horse meat containing bute will experience one of these side effects," she added.

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